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Day: June 18, 2007

With the charges against the three accused Duke lacrosse players dropped, Nifong disbarred, and the three players receiving a settlement from Duke University (Jim Hoft has the statement from the players here) over what they went through, the question on everyone’s mind seems to be:

Tigerhawk has a great recap and spectacular pictures from this weekend’s festivities in Britain honoring veterans of the British war against Argentina in defense of the Falkland Islands. The Brits were, of course, victorious, and June 17th was the 25th anniversary of that victory.

Among those in attendance: The Iron Lady herself, former PM Margaret Thatcher. Still looking strong and proud.

Speaking of the former PM, did you hear that candidate Fred Thompson travelled to London today to meet with her before a scheduled speech he’ll be making tomorrow at the conservative think tank “Policy Exchange”? Mike Allen at The Politico has the details:

Fred Thompson, the actor and former Tennessee senator who is expected to announce next month he is running for president, flew to London on Monday to meet Margaret Thatcher and deliver a foreign policy speech, his advisers tell The Politico.

Thompson’s advisers aim to use the London events to bolster his foreign policy credentials and elevate him above the increasingly contentious fray of the GOP race.

On Wednesday, he will pose for photos with Thatcher, which his advisers hope will enhance his support among devotees of former President Ronald Reagan.

Thompson will deliver the foreign policy speech, “Strengthening the Transatlantic Alliance,” on Tuesday at the Policy Exchange, a conservative think tank based in London.

Will he receive an endorsement from the Iron Lady? It’s not outside of the realm of possibility – after all, she did strongly endorse John Bolton for US ambassador to the UN (read her letter backing Bolton here).

Last October, we read about executives and ‘star presenters’ within the BBC who admitted at an ‘impartiality summit’ that they were “dominated by trendy, Left-leaning liberals who are biased against Christianity and in favour of multiculturalism.” This didn’t really come as any surprise to any of us who monitor – even casually – some of the BBC’s news ‘reporting’ but nevertheless was refreshing to see come straight from the horse’s mouth.

Confirming that bias was a report, commissioned by the BBC itself. Via This Is London:

The BBC is out of touch with large swathes of the public and is guity of self-censoring subjects that the corporation finds unpalatable, an official report has claimed.

As part of the report’s research the BBC’s own controller of editorial policy admitted that people felt that the corporation was guilty of a “bias of omission” by not covering their views.

Authors of the report called on the corporation to be more “open-minded” in the views it reflects and warned against “bias of elimination” which it branded “offensive”.

The report noted that the BBC had “come late” to several important stories in recent years, including Euroscepticism and immigration , which as it happens, were “off limits” in terms of a liberal-minded comfort zone”.

Research for the 80-page report showed that viewers were “frustrated” by political correctness at the BBC and feel the corporation is dominated by a London-centric bias, reflected in its programmes, presenters and coverage.

The report, which was commissioned by the BBC and written by independent programme-maker John Bridcut, also warned that if the BBC’s viewers did not feel that the corporation was reflecting their lives and attitudes people would lose faith in it.

Their review hit out at programme-makers for misjudging where “cultural mainstream” opinion stood and for wanting to “swim” against popular opinion.

Staff were told to avoid imposing their own liberal assumptions on the audience and told to “embrace a broader range of opinion”.

In the report, a news and current affairs producer recalled an instance where he had proposed a Newsnight investigation into the subject of “abortion on demand” but had been accused of being “anti-abortion” for even suggesting the idea which was not pursued.

Roger Mosey, former head of television news at the BBC, now head of sport, is also quoted as saying the corporation displays “fairly overt support” for multiculturalism.

Check out many more links on the report via Biased BBC – whose motto should be “Disovering bias in the BBC, before discovering bias in the BBC was cool.”

What I wrote in my previous post on the BBC executives (among other media bigwigs) admitting bias is worth repeating again, I think:

Liberals here at home and liberals abroad who continue to deny there is a strong liberal bias in the mainstream media in the face of all these admissions to the contrary are doing nothing more than the customary burying of their heads in the sand (I call it HISS: Head In Sand Syndrome) when faced with facts they don’t want to hear. Non-media liberals who will admit to seeing the liberal bias, who say it’s no big deal should imagine a world filled with mainstream media outlets that were predominantly conservative, uninclusive of opposing viewpoints, while showing an insensitivity to liberal concerns. Then they’d understand why conservatives feel the way they do about the mainstream media today. Not only that, but maybe, just maybe, they’d realize what a sham a political party and a media, both of which claim a â€˜big tent’ type of tolerance for all kinds of views, actually is.

Let’s see: We have liberal bias institutionalized not only in our mainstream media, but our colleges, too, and people wonder why conservatives so distrust the “big 3 networks” (plus a few more) and heap criticism on liberal college campuses? As they say, denial is a river …

That’s good news for the US military – there’s nothing they can do to stop what’s really causing Darfur’s problems. And we all know what a world breadbasket and model of prosperity Darfur was before this arbitrary assault by the planet’s weather patterns; an assault that is literally possessing and directly ordering the lunatics there to slaughter innocents with machetes.

Hence, we don’t need to intervene with our military there. Nothing the military can do to stop “climate change.”

Right? Angelina?

Makes sense to me …

I say we send a team of global warming diplomats, led by Al Gore, to set up an office there in order to solve the gw crisis. After all, once that is solved, all will be back to normal in Darfur.